Last month Liberal Conspiracy reported on the Facebook banning of Icelandic women’s rights campaigner after she reposted a death threat that was made against her.

Hildur Lilliendahl Viggósdóttir was booted off the social network for 30 days for taking a screenshot of a death threat that was made against her.

But now she’s been banned from Facebook again for an old link to the same screenshot.

Ms Viggósdóttir got in touch with Liberal Conspiracy and explained the latest twist in the online campaign against her:

Late October I posted a picture of a death threat made against me. I was reported, the picture was removed and I was blocked for 30 days.

Before I was blocked I linked to said picture in a Facebook-comment. I then finished my 30 day ban and a week later or so, I was reported for this (then probably 5-6 weeks old) comment. Posting screenshots may be against the rules, fine. But the link in question had been dead for weeks. The picture had been removed at least 5 weeks prior so there was nothing in the comment worthy of a block – or even removal.

She says she’d had no luck getting in touch with Facebook but wanted someone to review her case and explain what she did wrong.

Does she think Facebook are singling her out?

I know Facebook is not targeting me specifically. They’re hardly gonna lose much sleep over one powerless girl in Reykjavík, what with their billion users and all.

I’m being targeted by some little non-organized group of boys who want me silenced because they’re afraid that otherwise I’ll call them out on their sexist bullshit.

She told Liberal Conspiracy that she believes “stupid rules” should be challenged and only by breaking them she has managed to draw people’s attention to the “hypocrisy that supports misogynistic views and behavior”.

After he story made the national news in Iceland, the man who made the threat against Ms Viggósdóttir suspended his profile.

She wants Facebook to have more staff available to review problems such as hers, where women being targeted aren’t so quickly banned.

She added:

As every outspoken feminist on the internet, I’ve been subject to a lot of harassment and violence online, in person and with phone calls this year. I get Facebook-messages and emails with name callings and threats of violence all the time. Very recently someone posted this to 9gag. The picture was taken in 2006 after a random assault by girls in a bar.

The day before yesterday I got an anonymous email in the middle of the night, in which I was told to stop being a cunt or else fall down a flight of stairs.

She has also received accolades too. Ms Viggósdóttir is up for “hero of the year” award by an Icelandic newspaper. Ironically, the public can only vote through Facebook.

About the author
Shantel Burns is a News Editor at Liberal Conspiracy, and a publishing and journalism student and current affairs nerd.
Blogs at: ramblepolitics.blogspot.co.uk too.· Other posts by Shantel Burns

I do hope Hildur has taken her harassment to the police. I’m not completely sure on the law in Iceland, but I’d be very surprised if death threats and violent threats as part of a campaign of harassment are perfectly legal. And the scum who engage in such activity deserve their collar felt.

“I do hope Hildur has taken her harassment to the police. I’m not completely sure on the law in Iceland, but I’d be very surprised if death threats and violent threats as part of a campaign of harassment are perfectly legal. And the scum who engage in such activity deserve their collar felt.”

You may have missed this when it first came around. It’s linked in the article above. There was no death threat. What there was was goofy, jokey, offensive hyperbole that could be misrepresented as a death threat by dishonest people with an axe to grind. However, there appeared to be bullying and demonisation of the woman in question. LC rather embarrassed itself by focusing on bullshit melodrama when there was a genuine story to tell. It was annoying. Style over substance.

@OP

“I’m being targeted by some little non-organized group of boys who want me silenced because they’re afraid that otherwise I’ll call them out on their sexist bullshit.”

That, on the other hand, sounds like an extremely fair portrait of what’s going on. Silly little arseholes trying to intimidate a woman who frightens them. Good for her.

“I did miss this entirely first time around so I’m sorry my response reflected that. I didn’t factor in the hyperbole and probably should have.”

Oh, no worries, and I missed some hyperbole myself: the title has multiplied the non-existent threat into “threats”.

“Although, if she is being targetted by a bunch of idiots, that can in itself be harassment and against the law without there being a death threat.”

Certainly, although I understand that she went and found the comment (posted online in a thread complaining about her). That’s a big factor, but the original comment was pretty nasty and, as part of a larger package, could be harassment (although I don’t know what the law is like in Iceland).

The story seems to be that she ran a FB page where she republished sexist comments made against women, a sort of shame site. On another site, someone said something like, if they hit her with her car, they’d happily reverse back over her. The comment included a challenge for her to put it on her page. When she did, the antagonist complained to FB on copyright grounds and got the page suspended.

Essentially, everyone’s misrepresented the truth. Only someone with an axe to grind would interpret the comment as a real threat: was they guy seriously making a threat based on the extremely unlikely possibility that he would run her over by mistake? But her page got pulled on the grounds that she didn’t have permission to repost the comment, when the text of the comment itself demanded that she do so.